The reason why I'm so glad that Half-Life 2 and also Deus Ex 2 are coming to the XBox is that these two games were the last reasons I could think of for upgrading my PC. My PC, which was a top of the line Dell way back in 1998 and which I've hardly upgraded over the years. Over the years I've grown increasingly frustrated with the downsides of the PC platform in general, and with Microsoft's software and business strategy in particular. So I've decided to switch to an Apple iBook (and, soon, an iPod).

I use my PC for surfing, email, writing, and some occasional programming. I hardly ever play games on the PC anymore, and so it makes no sense for me to invest the money and effort it takes to have a machine that can play games. I have a bunch of consoles for that, and they never give me grief with drivers.

So far, I'm very happy with my iBook. I need to get a real mouse and I haven't figured out all of OS X yet, but I'm enjoying the well-designed and well-integrated hardware and software. I don't expect that I will never feel tempted to curse Apple, but so far I'm glowing in smug self-satisfaction.